T E X A R K A N A M A G A Z I N E
the time of day… a woman and her son. He wanted to buy a bigger mower. So, we went to what was then Tom’s Tractor. They were impressed by him, and he bought his bigger mower from them. They won his business for a long time after that. You get loyalty when you give that kind of customer service. They believed in him. Later on, I saw the other dealer, and I thought ‘they made a mistake because over the years, he will buy hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of equipment.’” Leave it to a mother to see all the potential in her child, and in Greg’s case, she was exactly right. Though he started young, from the beginning Greg was determined to build something he could be proud of. Each success pushed him further toward that goal. Eventually, at 15, he was ready to take out a loan so he could purchase his very own commercial mower. Unaware he needed to be 18 years old before he would be eligible for a loan, Greg applied. “The bank never realized I was not 18, so they gave me the loan. I paid that note off, and I needed to buy another mower, so I went back to the bank for a second loan. It was then they realized I was still not 18, but decided to give me the loan anyway since I paid off the first note ahead of schedule and was never late.” When he finally graduated from high school, Greg’s landscaping business was in high gear, and he made sure it continued to grow. A couple of years later, Greg’s focus began to shift. Since their father was in the “dirt business,” and it had been such a part of their early lives, Greg was determined to include his brother, Chad, when it was time to get Francis Excavating off the ground. Because the landscape business was running smoothly, and he had built a team he could trust to run things in his absence, Greg and Chad were able to focus their time and energy on the excavating business. “The first few years of business were a lot of personal man hours. We bid the jobs, we ran the equipment, we worked long hours… you name it, we did it. It was a rough few years starting out, just like any business, but we were determined to make it work.” And that is exactly what they have done. Coming from a legacy of hard workers makes an impact on a child, and that has been the example from all the adults in
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